‘Bloody’-crotched anti-circumcision demonstrator arrested in Alabama

The leader of an anti-circumcision protest group was arrested in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Saturday for interfering with a police officer’s attempt to issue the group a citation.

According to AL.com, the protest group Bloodstained Men were demonstrating at one of the town’s busiest intersections with fake blood staining the crotches of their all-white outfits.

Police attempted to issue the demonstrators a citation for not obtaining a permit to use the city’s right of way as the scene of their protest.

Tuscaloosa Police Department spokesman Sgt. Brent Blankley said that Bloodstained Men’s 67-year-old leader — a so-called “intactivist” who goes by the name Brother K — attempted to interfere with the officers issuing the citation and was placed under arrest.

Brother K was charged with obstruction of government business and held briefly in the Tuscaloosa County Jail before posting bond.

The website quoted Brother K as saying, “The 14th Amendment says that the law has to be applied equally — that you cannot have a law that favors one class of people. Right now we have a (Federal) Female Genital Mutilation Law that favors women. They are protected from birth against any form of genital surgery, even just a pin-prick of blood. Under the 14th Amendment, boys should be — and actually are — entitled to that same respect of their body that girls are.”

While two of the main Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam, require that males be circumcised, Christians and nonbelievers are mixed on the topic, some seeing circumcision as medically unnecessary at best and a devastating trauma to male babies at worst.

Others believe that circumcision has health advantages for men completely separate from religious belief, a conclusion that has been borne out by some studies, but which other scientists argue against with equal vehemence.

About the Author

David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.